Everyone wants to maximise their investment but this is easier said than done. In fact, many struggle to make a continued use case for recruiter tech.
To help find a solution to wasted investments, PitchMe has looked into what effective technology in recruitment looks like and how it can be tailored to help a business thrive.
Of course, it is important to start at the basics before introducing complex methodologies, so let’s look at how technology works within recruitment.
What is meant by recruiter tech investment?
Recruiter tech investment refers to the adoption of technology, such as software and online platforms, to assist in the recruitment process. This can include tools for posting job listings, searching resumes, conducting interviews, and managing candidate communications.
Some examples of recruitment technology include applicant tracking systems (ATS), candidate relationship management software (CRM), video interviewing platforms such as HireVue and Willo, and resume parsers.
The goal of recruiter tech investment is to streamline and automate the recruitment process, making it more efficient and effective for recruiters, their clients and their candidates.
The case for recruiter tech
The average recruiter spends 13 hours a week sourcing and 23 hours a week screening for a single role. That’s aside from the hours spent manually updating their talent database. So there’s clearly plenty of room for any solution that makes these and other processes quicker and less labour intensive.
Recruiter tech also gives agencies an advantage over the competition, especially in finding the best candidates first. And in 2022 the race to the best talent became febrile due to a perceived scarcity of talent. In fact, a massive 63% of recruiters identified it as their biggest pain point, according to LinkedIn’s Top 100 Hiring Statistics 2022.
This widespread problem prompted recruiters to look for new and innovative ways of getting to the best candidates before anyone else. And in nearly half of cases, recruiter tech was that innovation, according to data from Bullhorn’s GRID survey.
Fast-forward to 2023, and the number of recruiters expecting to increase spending on new recruiter tech has jumped to 59%, according to Jobvite. So it’s clear that year after year, more and more agencies are recognising the huge advantages these technologies bring.
How can investing in tech benefit recruitment?
Recruiter tech can benefit agencies in several ways:
Increased efficiency
As previously mentioned, recruiter tech can automate many of the manual tasks associated with recruiting. It can post job listings, review resumes, and schedule interviews. This can save recruiters time and allow them to focus on more high-value tasks, such as building relationships with candidates and clients.
To put those efficiency savings into perspective, a Dice report showed that 72% of recruiters identified lack of automation as a key factor in slowing down their process.
Better candidate management
Recruiter tech can help agencies keep track of candidates throughout the recruitment process, from initial contact to offer acceptance. This can improve communication and ensure that no candidates fall through the cracks.
Recruiters should be balanced in the application of recruiter tech in this area, however. As Bullhorn’s GRID survey showed, 70% of candidates want human interaction during the search and placement process. And an overly automated process can lead to candidate drop-out.
Improved data analysis
Tech solutions can collect and store large amounts of data on candidates, job listings, and recruitment processes. This data can be analysed to identify trends and patterns, which can help agencies make better-informed decisions about recruitment strategies.
Better client management
Recruiter tech can also help agencies manage their relationships with clients. Automated systems can help them track job orders, invoicing, and the progress of placements, allowing the recruitment agency to provide better service and communicate more effectively with their clients.
Greater reach
Recruitment technology can help agencies expand their reach by allowing them to post job listings to multiple job boards and social media platforms, and to search resumes from a wider pool of candidates.
By and large, when we’re talking about recruiter tech we’re talking about automation. And according to Bullhorn, agencies that embrace automation have a 64% higher fill rate. They also submit 33% more candidates per recruiter and are 55% more likely to report major revenue gains.
Overall, investment in recruiter tech and automation can help agencies to increase efficiency, improve candidate and client management, and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
How to maximise your investment
So we know what’s meant by recruiter tech, how to leverage it and its many benefits. But how can you implement it to ensure the best results for your business?
Identify the business need
The pain points we’ve discussed are those that are faced by recruiters in general. But each HR department, in-house recruitment team and agency will have its own unique set of challenges as well as goals. The key is to identify these through an honest self-audit before you begin to shop around for any form of recruiter tech solution.
By assessing your shortcomings in the most objective way possible, you will be able to accurately rank them in order of urgency and impact. From there you can source the most appropriate tech solutions and begin to implement them.
For example, you might find that screening CVs is the most time-consuming task in your team’s workweek. So to solve that problem you can adopt a resume parser tool to automate the process and do in minutes what a it would take a human to do in hours.
Train stakeholders and staff
Most workers are happy to do things in tried and tested ways. This is perhaps more pertinent when it comes to recruiters. You will likely find that the introduction of any technology will be met with a degree of passive resistance – even if the aim is to make their job easier. But it’s here where your case should be made. As the success of any tech investment will be in its adoption by the workforce.
Once workers are on board, training will be more straightforward. And it’s crucial that your team is literate before the implementation of your automation begins. To help you achieve this, check out these five tips from Edgepoint Learning on how to train employees on a new technology.
Review effectiveness
Like with any new strategy, methodology or process, building in a mechanism for measuring success is always crucial. This will enable you to understand whether or not your investment was worthwhile.
As a general rule, avoid getting locked into multi-year contracts before you know that technologies are effective. The last thing you want is to adopt a costly solution only to abandon it within a short space of time. Look for scalable and modular solutions that enable you to dial up or down, or withdraw altogether based on your desired cost-to-benefit ratio.
PitchMe’s solution, for example, is fully customisable and can be tailored to the needs of small, in-house teams right through to large agencies. To find out more about the scalability of our plans, click the button below and book a demo.
It’s also important to ensure you’re getting the most from your solution. So keep up to date with any changes or improvements. You may find that new features and functionalities improve the value of the product, making that cost-to-benefit ratio more favourable.
Lastly, share success stories with your team. If you’ve gone to the effort of an in-depth self-audit, researched tech solutions, implemented the most appropriate and found it to be successful, broadcast it. This also goes for stories of best practice with the solution. Sharing these will elevate your team’s overall game and ensure you’re able to use the technology to its full potential.
Think in terms of positive association: the better your team’s experiences with new tech are, the more eager they will be to adopt them in the future.
Considering your next move
Maximising your recruiter tech investment doesn’t strictly mean maximising only new investments. Think about your current technologies in the context of best practice. If you haven’t already, explore any new features that might deliver better results. Also, think about how you can optimise the technology to get the most out of your current plan. That goes for the scale of the contracts and whether you want to continue with them past their renewal date.
Most importantly, though, be targeted in the way that you approach recruiter tech. Of the agencies cited further up this article that are enjoying a 64% higher fill rate, 100% will have carried out the necessary research to ensure their initial outlay was spent wisely.
Build a thorough understanding of your business priorities and always validate products through review sites like G2 and Capterra. Also, use sites like Product Hunt to stay in the loop with emerging recruiter tech solutions such as PitchMe’s Job Description Generator.
The bottom line
Ultimately, recruiter tech, and in particular, automation, will play a critical role in your overall hiring strategy moving forwards. But to ensure you maximise your investment, it’s imperative that you carry out the necessary groundwork beforehand. It’s also important that you continuously A/B test and review behind the scenes once you’ve implemented your chosen product.
Throughout the process, it’s worth keeping one question in mind: What are we trying to achieve with this solution? It should always be about supporting your recruiters and enabling them to work more efficiently.
As our co-founder and CEO Dina Bay says: “Recruiter tech isn’t replacing recruiters. It should be considered as a supportive tool to give recruiters more time to focus on building relationships with their candidates and clients. Thinking about it in those terms will enable recruiters to fully optimise it for their needs and therefore maximise their investment.”